Tag: Play It Again Sam

[Cover & Photograph: Vaughan Films]It’s Wednesday about 5pm. The Gay News office is a tip. We’ve been mailing subscription copies most of the day. The phone rings.

It’s Variety. Not the show-biz trade paper, but the girl who answers the phone at Vaughan Films, with the collected movie works of Trevelyan (not the ex-censor), Anger and Warhol in cans piled up round her desk and her electric typewriter.

“Joe’s in town. Would you like to see him?” she asks.

“Would I? You must be joking. What time and where?”

“I’ll have to tell you the time tomorrow and it’ll be at the office.”

Next morning up and ready ridiculously early. We have to waste some time listening to Jimmy Young and sitting at home – if home is where my toothbursh is – waiting for Variety to call.

She does. At midday.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to get up, Peter, you can see Joe at one.”

London Transport Executive does its best to delay all 149 buses to Liverpool Street, and to keep all Central Line trains to Oxford Circus from running.

Despite LTE we get there on time. Just.

Variety looks after the Gay News carrier bag while we’re off to see the ‘superstar’ of the movies that puts fear into the hearts of the sensitive and politically ambitious of Enfield.

Next door is almost as crowded, but this time it’s people not film cans that are piling up round the walls. There are Christine, the lady who fixes almost anything, and the rest of the small distribution company’s directors and staff, all buzzing with excitement at the thought of The Big Opening, (Trash, February 8, London Pavilion). And leaning against the doorpost there’s a young man who looks as though he’s trying to merge with the furniture and the posters with his face on.

He’s got the face of Joe Dalessandro, but it’s difficult to recognise him in a tidy blue suit with creases in the trousers any banker would be proud of, let alone with his clothes on.

Christine says: “This is Peter Holmes of Gay News and he’d like to have a few words with you.”

We shake hands and say hello/hullo/hallo and retire to the inner sanctum — the office of Andy Warhol’s European agent, Jimmy Vaughan.

Joe seems frankly surprised that Europe’s leading gay fortnightly wants to talk to him. He takes out a Marlboro and lights it. He says he’s hungry, loud enough for the massed company directors and their right-hand men and women to hear.

On every surface of the room there’s a picture of Joe, some in colour, some in plain old black-and-white.

Gay News: How much do you identify with the characters you play in the movies? After all, you’re always called Joe on the screen.

Joe: Well, I’ve got Joe tatooed on my arm, and I didn’t find out how to blank it out with make-up until just recently.

GN: You’ve been a screen stud, a gay and you’ve even fixed heroin on screen. How much of it is the real you?

Joe: None of it. They’re just characters in movies. At home I’m just a quiet family sort of man. I’ve got my mother living in the city, and I visit her regularly. And I’ve got a wife at home and a child. And my wife cooks me delicious meals and I stay at home and watch television a lot. I don’t know any junkies. I don’t know any gays. I’m just a very straight sort of person.

GN: Despite that you’ve become something of a gay hero.

Joe: I don’t know why.

GN: Well, Joe was pansexual in Flesh and Lonesome Cowboys was overtly gay.

Joe: Well, I’m glad I’ve become a hero for somebody.

GN: Back at reality in the Warhol movies, there’s a scene in Trash where you fix heroin…

Joe: ‘Fix’? Is that what you call it?

GN: You fix heroin, you shoot it up into your arm in full view of the screen. That scene made the boyfriend I saw it with faint.

Joe: Did you see it here in London?

GN: Yes, at a screening for the trade, to coin a phrase. Anyway, what did you shoot up, or fix, or whatever? Was it water or something?

Joe: I didn’t shoot anything into my arm.

GN: You mean it’s all done with the tricks of the cinema business?

Joe: Yes, I never put a needle into me.

GN: You say you lead a very straight life. Does that mean you’re anti-drug and anti-gay?

Joe: What do you mean by ‘anti’?

GN: Do you personally, discriminate against drug-users or gays you meet?

Joe: I can’t really because I don’t come into any contact with anyone who falls into these categories, because I spend most of my life at home when I’m not working. I believe that people should be able to do whatever they like, in ones or twos or threes or whatever outside my home. But once they’re inside they have to do what I say.

I wouldn’t discriminate against gays — if I knew any – but then, I wouldn’t sleep with a gay guy either.

Actually, I’m very anti-drug. I don’t use any and I don’t allow any to be used in my home.

GN: I think Trash is probably the most convincing condemnation of drug-use I’ve ever seen. It’s ridiculous their banning it for two years in this country. If it was given a U-certificate, that’s the unrestricted viewing certificate, and shown in schools, it would kill the smack trade stone dead in just ten years, probably.

(Jimmy Vaughan, Andy Warhol’s European agent walks into his office to the refrigerator that holds the hospitality wine.)

Joe: Do you have some kind of hamburger joint in England?

JV: We’ll be giving you some meat in half-an-hour. We’ll go out for a steak.

Joe: 15 minutes.

JV: 15 minutes.

Joe: I’m sorry but I really am hungry.

JV: And when Joe gets hungry he gets annoyed. Isn’t that right Joe?

Joe: Yes.

JV: Don’t mind me, I’m just popping through.

GN: You’ve been with the Warhold factory for five years now …

Joe: Six.

GN: Ever since The Loves of Ondine. Can you see a time when you’ll quit the factory to join the more conventional movie-making industry?

Joe: Not really. After all, the movies we make have changed a lot. Paul Morrisey has changed things and the movies are very different now.

GN: Yes, but Savages has just opened in London with Ultra Violet in it. She was one of the factory’s first superstars, and Play It Again Sam had Viva in a very small and rather bad part.

Joe: Viva was great in Cisco Pike. Did you ever get to see that?

GN: No. What I meant was that these two have broken away from the factory, seemingly to get into the straight movies, if you can call Savages straight. Would you do that, now that you’ve become a ‘superstar’?

Joe: I wouldn’t say I was a superstar.

GN: It’s the Warhol name for the stars of the factory’s movies. Would you make movies for other directors and other set-ups?

Joe: Sure I would, but that doesn’t mean I’d stop working for Warhol. I enjoy working there too much to leave it.

GN: Why did you start working for the Warhol factory?

Joe: You see I like money and I wanted to be an actor in the movies and no studio would give someone of my age a part unless he’d already done a couple of features.

GN: How old were you when you started, then?

Joe: 18.

GN: At that age, I suppose you can’t get a part unless your father is a big-name star.

Joe: Who are you thinking of?

GN: Peter Fonda, for one.

Joe: Do you know how old Peter Fonda is?

GN: He’s starting to look about 40 or 50. But he was in a lot of features before he made the big-time, albeit low-budget jobs.

Joe: Yes, but he was 28 or 29 when he started those.

GN: Are you only loyal to the Warhol movie factory because it keeps you in regular employment?

Joe: I suppose so, yes. I don’t live and breathe it, and I’m not politically committed to it. To me they’re just movies with parts in them to be played.

GN: Which is your favourite of the movies you’ve been in?

Joe: I don’t know that I have a favourite. I liked them all. They’re all movies.

Joe: I never say what people should do and what they shouldn’t do, and I don’t think anybody else should. Britain’s no worse than other countries.

GN: It’s more repressive than most, and not just in censorship. The laws against gays make male gay sex legal only between consenting adults over 21 in private, as long as neither is a member of the armed forces or the merchant navy.

Joe: What you’ve got is a law that gives gays the freedom they haven’t got in the States, and then takes it away again at the same time.

GN: Sure, that’s why we run a contact ad section. You see gay contact ads got International Times busted a few years back. The law hasn’t changed since.

Joe: But contact ads aren’t important enough to get busted on.

GN: The contact ad thing is just an example of the discriminatory laws against gays in this country. You know the reason the Bailey documentary got banned was because of the movie clips in it, most of them with you in them? People complained because the clips showed gays and you said fuck four or five times.

GN: Well there are about four copies coming in here every fortnight. You know Kenneth Anger is working here? Have you seen Anger’s movies?

Joe: No.

GN: Oh. You should. He more or less invented the quote underground unquote movie years ago with some of the earliest gay movies made that were really good movies. Now he’s getting more involved in the work of Aleister Crowley.

(By this time it’s lunchtime and Joe heads off for the steakery. One of the directors is asked to follow with cash for the meal, as he’s tied up talking to the art man about the deadline for posters for Trash’s opening.

Then other members of the staff talk about the people they forgot to invite and talk to Joe on his 24-hour trip to London.)

Staff: Did we invite that guy who does the arts on Friday for the Standard? What’s his name? And how about Ray Connolly? Did we invite him? Damn.

It’s not good for any movie star to be likened to another, so it’s invidious to say that Woody Allen is the new Groucho Marx, or even Buster Keaton. But whether it’s fair to call him that or not, that’s exactly what he is.

Just as Peter Sellers showed promise of being a comic talent some years ago, before his ability was squandered in the search for a few dollars more to buy another mini, Woody Allen now looks set firmly on course for being the best comedy actor we’ve had for years. And to cap it all he writes most of his own material.

Until recently (in fact until Bananas) he never put a foot wrong as far as I’m concerned.

So it’s with some regret that I have to admit that I didn’t exactly die laughing at Woody clowning his way through Play It Again, Sam, Herbert Ross’ movie from Woody’s screenplay based on his own stage play.

Perhaps it’s because this movie is based on a stage play that it doesn’t work as well as Bananas or Take The Money and Run. Or perhaps it’s because it’s directed by someone other than Woody Allen himself — he directed the others and has just finished Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex etc.

Whatever the reason, this movie just doesn’t hang together as well as most of Woody Allen’s humour.

Basically, his usual maladroit everyman figure is surrounded by disasters, as usual — but this time they’re romantic disasters mostly.

True, there are moments when the usual brilliant visual humour shows through, but, generally speaking, those good patches stick out. And that’s a bad sign for any movie. If the good bits are conspicuous, then the rest can’t be up to scratch.

I love Woody Allen. He is me. He is a human disaster area. He is the victim of gadgets and 20th Century technological hardware. His hairdryer causes havoc in his medicine cupboard as he hurries to meet a girl.

The story is this: Woody is a movie-critic on a rather esoteric movie-mag. His wife walks out because he’s more hung-up about celluloid than sex. So he has to go out hunting for a new mate. He’s helped in this by Humphrey Bogart (Jerry Lacy) and his best friend’s wife (Diane Keaton).

The Bogart figure is the product of Woody’s movie-mad imagination. Bogie follows him on his dates and tells him what to do, for Woody is, as ever, completely flustered when faced with the realities of a situation.

Every date fixed for him by his best friends (and that wife of his) turns out to be a shambles, because Woody just can’t pull the birds any more. Not even a roaring nymphomaniac — a crazy cameo played by Viva (from the Warhol factory).

Meanwhile as rebuff after rebuff erodes our hero’s self-confidence. Woody discovers the only woman he feels comfortable with is his best friend’s wife. They have sex.

She tells her husband their marriage is on the rocks and he goes off on yet another of his business trips. Realising that she should be with her husband she rushes off to join him at the airport.

Meanwhile Woody turns up at the airport, but he won’t keep her from her husband because that’s not the way it happened in Casablanca — and sure enough, there’s Bogie at his elbow, mighty proud of him, and that’s the way he’s learned to treat dames.

Romantic comedies aren’t exactly my elegant glass of Babycham. But this one’s different. It has to be with Woody Allen involved. Who else could give the woman he loves a plastic skunk for her birthday or say as she walks out of his life that that’s the scene he’s been wanting to play all his life – or, at least, since he first saw Casablanca.

Trouble is the movie’s produced by Arthur (Planet of the Apes) Jacobs and much of his influence seems to have spread throughout the movie. The intercutting of real Bogart footage is overly heavy and unnecessary. But Woody wins out in the end. There’s a scene where he’s elated and walks

along a bridge patting the backs of the boys fishing. One of course, falls off the parapet. Woody, of course, notices nothing.

It’s fun, but it’s not the best of Woody Allen. All the same it’s better than no Woody Allen. And that’s enough to get me into the cinema – even at 10.30 a.m.